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“Mon triste voyage”: Sentimentality and Autobiography in Gottschalk's The Dying Poet

Laura Moore Pruett Merrimack College, [email protected]

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Repository Citation Pruett, L. M. (2012). “Mon triste voyage”: Sentimentality and Autobiography in Gottschalk's The Dying Poet. Music, 36(2), 146-158. Available at: https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/vpa_facpub/1

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“Mon triste voyage”: Sentimentality and Autobiography in Gottschalk's The Dying Poet Author(s): Laura Moore Pruett Reviewed work(s): Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 36, No. 2, Counterpoints: Nineteenth-Century Music and Literature (Fall 2012), pp. 146-158 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2012.36.2.146 . Accessed: 05/01/2013 01:15

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH CENTURY MUSIC

“Mon triste voyage”: Sentimentality and Autobiography in Gottschalk’s The Dying Poet

LAURA MOORE PRUETT

The terms “sentimentalism” and “sensibility” authors as diverse as Immanuel Kant (1724– play a central role in contemporary scholarly 1804), (1759–1805), Charles discourse on literature and intellectual theory Dickens (1812–70), and, later, D. H. Lawrence in the nineteenth century.1 Often used inter- (1885–1930). Visual and literary artworks ex- changeably, these words identify simultaneous plored the various facets of the sentimental eighteenth-century developments in popular movement. Among its primary characteristics culture and philosophy that were centered in was a preoccupation with death that character- England but far-reaching in their influence. The ized both the European and American sensi- “cult of sentiment”2 was a phenomenon in bilities of the time. Spiritualism, or the belief which emotions and feelings, as opposed to in communication with dead souls, began to reason and logic, were seen as the routes to grow in popularity in the years before the Civil moral and social improvement. This movement War, continuing into the early twentieth cen- and its ideals were manifested in writings by tury.3 And often, the emphasis on feeling was directly connected to the feminine experience, as in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), the 1See Michael Bell, Sentimentalism, Ethics, and the Cul- tragic story of a woman’s moral virtue and her ture of Feeling (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Jerome McGann, eventual ruin. The Poetics of Sensibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Chris Jones, Radical Sensibility: Literature and However, a parallel movement in literature Ideas in the 1790s (London: Routledge, 1993). 2See, for example, Michael Bell, “The Cult of Sentiment and the Culture of Feeling,” in Representations of Emo- tions, ed. Jürgen Schlaeger and Gesa Stedman (Tübingen: 3Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America Gunter Narr, 1999), pp. 87–98. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

146 19th-Century Music, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 146–58 ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions Web site, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/ reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2012.36.2.146.

This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and the visual arts explored a male archetype of Goethe’s Werther. The young poet wrote his 16 LAURA MOORE the sentimental protagonist. British author Tho- July diary entry about his beloved Charlotte’s PRUETT mas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Church- “melody which she plays on the piano with Gottschalk’s yard, first published in 1751, provided inspira- angelic skill, so simple and so spiritual!”5 Louisa Dying Poet tion for a long line of literary and poetic works May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) featured two on the theme of death and mortality. The “Epi- characters who play the piano, one female and taph” that concludes Gray’s ode confirms that one male. The parlor pieces enjoyed by young- the primary subject is a young unknown poet, est sister Beth, who was reticent to play for an over whose grave the narrator is meditating: audience and preferred the shadow of twilight, contrast with the more serious Mozart and Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth Beethoven works, such as the “Pathétique” So- A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. nata, played by neighbor boy Laurie, who in the Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth, eyes of his grandfather “was getting too fond of And Melancholy mark’d him for her own. it.”6 Alcott reinforced gender distinctions in ...... multiple ways. Beth assumed a modest and No farther seek his merits to disclose, retiring character and played “pretty, easy mu- Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) sic,” songs, and hymns that contrasted with The bosom of his Father and his God.4 Laurie’s choice of the presumably more power- ful compositions of Beethoven; also, Laurie’s Perhaps one of the most famous examples fea- grandfather made it clear that while music is turing the dying male protagonist was Johann quite acceptable as a pastime for a woman, it Wilhelm von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen should not play too important a role in a man’s Werthers (1774, revised 1787), in which young life.7 Werther, a passionate and sensitive artist, suf- A later literary work successfully connected fers such great emotional turmoil over his be- the disparate elements of the sentimentalist loved Lotte that he is eventually compelled to movement so popular during the long nine- take his own life. Werther therefore can be teenth century. James Joyce’s 1914 short story viewed as a template for the “dying poet,” an “The Dead” features many references to music image that was realized repeatedly throughout over the course of an evening party: waltzes, the long nineteenth century. British poet Tho- quadrilles, and art songs are all performed by mas Chatterton was famously immortalized in the guests of a musical family. After the party, the 1856 painting “The Death of Chatterton” a married couple, retiring to a hotel room for by Henry Wallis, which depicts the seventeen- the snowy night, holds a conversation about year-old writer after his suicide by arsenic. This how the song The Lass of Aughrim triggers the male archetype was marked by several com- wife’s memories of a young love, a boy who mon elements: great creativity, high levels of died after spending a rainy night waiting under sensitivity, physical and emotional fragility, sig- her window. In this way Joyce skillfully con- nificant moments of disappointment, and early nects music and emotion in his story with the (and often self-inflicted) death. Two French po- ems, both titled “Le Poète mourant” and first published in 1823, explicitly sustained the dy- 5“Sie hat eine Melodie, die sie auf dem Klaviere spielet ing poet trope and simultaneously inspired mu- mit der Kraft eines Engels, so simpel und so geistvoll!” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen sicians to explore the same in their composi- Werther (Leipzig: Göschen, 1787), p. 87. tions. These poems will be discussed in more 6Louisa May Alcott, Little Women and Good Wives: Be- detail below. ing Stories for Girls (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1871), p. 71. Musical allusions were often incorporated 7Ibid., p. 73. That the music Beth plays is never specifi- into sentimental literary works, beginning with cally named, unlike the Beethoven sonata Laurie performs, reinforces the disparity. See also Petra Meyer-Frazier, “Mu- sic, Novels, and Women: Nineteenth-Century Prescrip- tions for an Ideal Life,” Women and Music: A Journal of 4Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written in a Country Church- Gender and Culture 10 (2006), 45–59, for a discussion of yard (London: Dodsley, 1751), p. 11, lines 117–20, 125–28. music and gender in American sentimental literature.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH sentimentalization of death, specifically that assumed critical significance during the 1860s, CENTURY MUSIC of a young man. when so many were lost during the Civil War. The sensibility movement in literature was In her 2008 publication This Republic of Suf- paralleled by the composition of similarly sen- fering, Drew Gilpin Faust considers the dra- timental music, both in Europe and in America. matic shifts in the American understanding of The pieces Beth and her real-life counterparts death that took place with the advent of the played would have included parlor songs writ- war. According to Faust, “The war took young, ten by American composers, like Stephen healthy men and rapidly, often instantly, de- Foster’s Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, as stroyed them with disease or injury. This well as character pieces by European artists, marked a sharp and alarming departure from including ’s Lieder ohne existing preconceptions about who should die.”9 Worte. There existed an understood set of cri- In addition, death became a universal phenom- teria for such music: women were the most enon rather than an individual one: seemingly likely performers, although men were not barred “every household mourns some loved one from performing it; pieces were short, diatonic, lost.”10 The experience of mourning for the and formally straightforward; and many works young men lost is memorialized in letters and had evocative titles and texts that emphasized journals of the time. Often the words of the emotional subjects like love, family, religion, bereaved echo the language of the contempora- and, frequently, death.8 neous sentimental literature: “I can’t realize Nineteenth-century musical representations that I am never to see that dear boy again,” of death include numerous examples of songs wrote Sarah Palmer after her brother was killed on the dying poet archetype as well as those at Second Bull Run.11 Even the soldiers them- perhaps better-known examples about dead or selves contemplated how they would be re- dying young women, such as Henry S. membered after death. Anticipating his immi- Thompson’s ballad Lilly Dale (1852) or Stephen nent death, which occurred in 1861, L. L. Jones Foster’s Eulalie, The Bride of Death (1853). wrote to his wife, “I wish you to have my last These vocal works, performed in the context of words and thoughts. Remember me as one who the home parlor, naturally fulfilled a dual pur- . . . was perhaps better than he seemed. I shall pose: the consumer simultaneously was edified hope to survive and meet you again . . . but it by and took pleasure in the corporeal experi- may not be so.”12 Such desire not to be forgot- ence of performing the song, yet also felt sym- ten was recognized and then captured by artists pathetic or possibly empathetic stirrings in re- working to portray the experiences of war. sponse to the poetic content. Solo piano com- The war and its effects resonated in every positions could also serve a similar purpose, medium of art, from literature and music to such as funeral marches, like those by Frederic the relatively new technologies of lithography Chopin and , and Mendelssohn’s and photography.13 A line can be traced from Trauermarsch (op. 62, no. 3); similarly titled the fascination in literature with fictional “dy- works were composed by amateurs as well. Yet ing poets” to the more immediate reality of the subject of the dead or dying young man dying sons, husbands, and brothers. Walt Whit- man’s poem “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest,

8Of course, many pieces lie outside this general character- ization; often ballads were modeled on operatic styles rather than folk ones, and some, including Jeannie, were written 9Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death from a male perspective. Stephen Foster’s Open Thy Lat- and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008), p. tice, Love is an example of both the influence of opera and xii. the masculine voice. See Matthew Head, “‘If the Pretty 10Kate Stone, Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861– Little Hand Won’t Stretch’: Music for the Fair Sex in Eigh- 1868, ed. John Q. Anderson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Uni- teenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the American Musi- versity Press, 1955), p. 264. cological Society 52 (1999), 203–54; and Ruth Solie, 11Quoted in Faust, This Republic of Suffering, p. 145. “‘Girling’ at the Parlor Piano,” in Music in Other Words: 12Quoted in Faust, This Republic of Suffering, p. 19. Victorian Conversations (Berkeley: University of Califor- 13See Alice Fahs, The Imagined Civil War: Popular Litera- nia Press, 2004), pp. 85–117, for treatment of gender roles ture of the North and South, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill: Uni- and their perpetuation at the piano. versity of North Carolina Press, 2003).

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and the Road Unknown,” first published in his pictures of the dead at Antietam and Gettysburg. LAURA MOORE anthology Drum-Taps in 1865, details his en- He later attained a degree of notoriety when in PRUETT counter with “a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of the twentieth century it was discovered that Gottschalk’s bleeding to death.”14 In Whitman’s first-person some of his photographs may have been staged, Dying Poet narrative, “I bend to the dying lad, his eyes including “Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter,” a open, a half-smile gives he me, / Then the eyes poignant portrait of a young Confederate sol- close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the dier who died in the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg.17 darkness.” Whitman’s journals also include fre- It has been noted, however, that, at the time, quent mention of dead bodies and even body photography was viewed as an art form that parts encountered during his work in army hos- might someday replace other forms of visual pitals. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first pub- art; such manipulation therefore may have been lished his poem “Killed at the Ford” in 1866 in more acceptable than it would be today.18 the Atlantic Monthly. In it he relates the tale Music played a variety of roles throughout of a bullet that not only kills a “beautiful youth” the Civil War. In addition to the battlefield but also has a second impact: marches and patriotic broadsides, many senti- mental songs were written that looked at the That fatal bullet went speeding forth, war’s impact either from the point of view of Till it reached a town in the distant North, the doomed young soldiers or from that of those Till it reached a house in a sunny street, left behind. Irwin Silber’s Songs of the Civil Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat War features a section titled “Weeping Sad and Without a murmur, without a cry; Lonely: Sentimental War Songs of a Sentimen- ...... tal Age.”19 The subjects of the songs range from And the neighbors wondered that she should die.15 lonely or anonymous deaths at the scene of the battle (The Drummer Boy of Shiloh) to the last Visual artists also commemorated both the words of dying men (Tell Mother I Die Happy) premature deaths of young soldiers and the im- to home-front sorrow (The Vacant Chair). Fre- pact their loss had on those left behind. In a quently, responses to such songs would be famous illustration by Winslow Homer that penned, as was the case in the pair of songs Do appeared in the pages of Harper’s Weekly, a They Miss Me at Home? and Yes, We Think of young woman sits weeping, her head on her Thee at Home. Others gave voice to the nurses arm, in a panel titled “Wounded,” implying who witnessed the slow deaths of soldiers, such both the physical wounds of her beloved and as Let Me Kiss Him for His Mother. This song, the emotional wounding she is experiencing.16 too, was answered, with words that expressed a Photography, newly introduced to the United mother’s gratitude: States in the 1840s, provided an even more immediate technique of capturing images of Bless the lips that kissed our darling, the young, battered bodies of those recently As he lay on his death-bed, lost. While Mathew Brady conceived of the idea Far from home and ’mid cold strangers of documenting the war through photography, Blessings rest upon your head.20 one of his employees, Alexander Gardner, pub- lished a comprehensive postbellum collection The lyrics to John H. Hewitt’s 1864 song of his own images entitled Photographic Sketch- Somebody’s Darling are particularly relevant book of the Civil War in 1866. Among his photographs are some of the most iconic im- ages of the Civil War, including his famous 17Shirley Samuels, Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War (Cary, NC: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 70–75. 18See William A. Frassanito, Gettysburg: A Journey In Time (New York: Scribner, 1975). 14Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Philadelphia: Welsh, 19Irwin Silber, Songs of the Civil War (New York: Colum- 1882), p. 239. bia University Press, 1960). 15Atlantic Monthly, 17:102 (April 1866), 479. 20J. A. C. O’Connor, Bless the Lips That Kissed Our Dar- 16Winslow Homer, “News from the War,” Harper’s Weekly ling (H. De Marsan, 1865). Quoted in Faust, This Republic 6:285 (14 June 1862), 376–77. of Suffering, p. 13.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH to the sentimental trope of the young dying a short philosophy of music in the pages of his CENTURY MUSIC man. Focusing on the subject’s delicate appear- journal; it was later published in the Atlantic ance, they paint a mental image quite similar Monthly (1865). Among his points was that to the portrait of poet Thomas Chatterton. music can function as an agent of reminis- cence. He explains: “Music is a moral agent. Somebody’s darling, so young and so brave, Through the medium of the nervous system it Wearing still on his sweet yet pale face, brings the superior faculties into play; its lan- Soon to be hid in the dust of the grave, guage is that of sentiment. Moreover, the ideas The lingering light of his boyhood’s grace. that have presided over the combinations of Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride, musical art establish relations between its com- Who’ll tell his mother where her boy died? posers and the soul. . . . Music awakens in us Matted and damp are his tresses of gold, 22 Kissing the snow of that fair young brow; reminiscences, memories, associations.” Pale are the lips of most delicate mould, Gottschalk’s language here echoes that of the Somebody’s darling is dying now. writers of fiction and poetry discussed earlier. Back from his beautiful purple-veined brow, He emphasizes the power of music to inspire Brush off the wandering waves of gold; deeply felt sensations and memories. Acknowl- Cross his white hands on his broad bosom now, edgment and application of his theory are cen- Somebody’s darling is still and cold. . . . tral to the search for meaning in his sentimen- Somebody’s watching and waiting for him, tal compositions. Yearning to hold him again to her breast; Gottschalk wrote a number of sentimental Yet there he lies with his blue eyes so dim, works throughout his career.23 One of his most And purple, child-like lips half apart. popular and enduring was a Meditation for solo Tenderly bury the fair, unknown dead, Pausing to drop on his grave a tear; piano entitled The Dying Poet. Possessing no Carve on the wooden slab over his head, opus number and first published during the “Somebody’s darling is slumbering here.”21 Civil War in Boston by Ditson in 1864, the piece was dedicated to Mrs. George Henriques, The theme of remembrance is also present in the matron of a New York family that had the song. The last two verses request the lis- given Gottschalk assistance and housed him at tener to stop and weep at the young man’s various times. At the time of its composition, grave, carve a memorial gravestone, and even Gottschalk had just ended an extended stay in to cut off a lock of his hair. In each of these Cuba, where he had composed without the sentimental Civil War songs, the imagery and stress of performing, a welcome change from emotional impact of the subject resonates his first American performing circuits from 1853 deeply with the listener. to 1857. After his father Edward’s untimely The combination of the popular sentimental death in October 1853, Gottschalk assumed style, the subject of the dying young man, and the considerable outstanding debts and began a the effects of the Civil War inspired many com- lifelong self-charged mission to support his posers, even those who wrote predominantly mother and seven siblings. His primary finan- nonvocal music. New Orleans-born pianist and cial goal in performing from that point on was composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–69) to make enough money to send to his family, frequently explored the concepts of death and then living in Paris, and perhaps have a little reminiscence in both his compositions and writ- left over for his own expenses. In Cuba, ings. Around December 1862, Gottschalk wrote

22Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Notes of a Pianist, ed. Jeanne Behrend (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), pp. 108–09. 21John H. Hewitt, Somebody’s Darling (Macon, GA: J. C. 23Perhaps his most famous was The Last Hope, op. 16 Schreiner & Son, 1864). Available at the Historic Ameri- (1854), but others include a solo piano Berceuse, op. 47 (ca. can Sheet Music collection at the American Memory 1860), and a vocal berceuse with text by H. C. Watson, project of the Library of Congress [http://memory.loc.gov/ “Slumber On, Baby Dear,” ca. 1861. Also published under ammem/award97/ncdhtml/hasmhome.html], accessed 7 his pseudonym Seven Octaves were Le Chant du Martyr, September 2012. The Maiden’s Blush, and Radieuse, all ca. 1859–63.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Gottschalk was able to take a break from his soldiers. Entries in his Notes of a Pianist illu- LAURA MOORE worries and simply relax. He wrote: minate the conditions: PRUETT Gottschalk’s Seized with a profound disgust of the world and of We are again pursuing our journey. It continues to Dying Poet myself, tired, discouraged, suspecting men (and snow, and from certain signs the farmers say it will women), I hastened to hide in the wilds on the extin- have drifted, and will certainly have obstructed the guished volcano of N——, where I lived for many road. Here we are stopped. . . . The thermometer has months like a cenobite. . . . gone down to twenty-five degrees below zero. . . . I Perched upon the edge of the crater, on the very have the sad perspective of passing the night on the top of the mountain, my cabin overlooked the whole floor (31 December 1863). country. . . . Every evening I moved my piano out En route to Baltimore. Our car is filled with very upon the terrace, and there, in view of the most noisy soldiers who sing songs, smelling also of the beautiful scenery in the world, which was bathed by eternal whisky. At first we do not pay any attention the serene and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I to it, but they begin to be very disagreeable. One played, for myself alone, everything that the scene begins to smoke, then a second—a third imitates opened up before me inspired—and what a scene! . . . him (21 March 1864). It was at this period that Strakosch wrote, offer- Cleveland is devoted to bad hotels, the bill of fare ing me an engagement for a round of concerts in the ostentatiously containing an interminable list of United States. I hesitated an instant, cast a last glance dishes, not one of which is eatable. The fish is not at the past, gave a sigh, and signed. The dream was fresh, the soup greasy water, the butter rancid, the finished.24 turkey tough. . . . The tea tastes of chamomile and hay. Everything is so dirty—so badly prepared! (8 His new tour, managed and often accompa- December 1864).26 nied by impresario Max Strakosch, had him traveling across the Civil War-torn United He was, by his own admission, living the life of States. By his own account, he traveled over a “carpetbag.”27 Throughout these unfortunate one hundred thousand miles by train over the experiences, however, Gottschalk always kept next three years. In his Notes he recorded feel- his audience and its desires foremost in mind. ing “whirled in space. This agitated life is a His compositions continued to reflect contem- distressing monotony. . . . Pianistomonambu- porary tastes while highlighting his virtuosic list!” He also noted in December 1862 that he talent. The Dying Poet was among them. It was had given eighty-five concerts and traveled immensely popular both during Gottschalk’s fifteen thousand miles in fewer than five lifetime and for many years afterward, appear- months. He described his routine: “Eighteen ing in numerous publications and used as mu- hours a day on the railroad! Arrive at seven sic for silent films through the 1920s.28 It was o’clock in the evening, eat with all speed, ap- originally published under a pseudonym with pear at eight o’clock before the public. The last the cover reading: “Performed by Gottschalk at note finished, rush quickly for my luggage, and his concerts with immense success. Composed en route until next day, always to the same by Seven Octaves.” Later editions did away thing! I have become stupid with it. . . . The with this pretense. sight of a piano sets my hair on end.”25 The The Dying Poet presents a particular chal- concerts succeeded one another at breakneck lenge to scholars. Gottschalk never mentions speed; sometimes he performed in two differ- the piece in his Notes, aside from a cryptic ent cities in one day. Gottschalk encountered reference on 1 November 1864 to “five new hospitable cities with grand halls and comfort- contraband pieces that are to be published un- able hotels, but he also endured execrable quar- der the aegis of a borrowed paternity,” e.g., ters, miserable storms, and legions of unruly

26Ibid., pp. 150–52, 168, 238. 27Ibid., p. 120. 28S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula!: The Life and Times of 24Gottschalk, Notes, p. 43. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York: Oxford University 25Ibid., pp. 116, 102. Press, 1995), pp. 444–45.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH Seven Octaves.29 Because it lacks the distinc- can be construed as a tenor voice, evoking the CENTURY MUSIC tive Latin American syncopations and quota- male “dying poet” of the title. The placement tions of Creole or minstrel tunes found in his of the melody also adds to its plaintive quality other works, musical analysis and interpreta- and assures it is in a comfortable range for tion rely on the unequivocal relationship of the listeners to hum on the way home after the piece to the sentimental parlor song tradition concert. The ornamental inverted mordent in and its use of the dying poet trope to illuminate m. 10 momentarily quickens the predominantly Gottschalk’s artistic goals. eighth-note rhythm, but the overall impression The composition is organized as variations of the melody is straightforward and sweet. on two themes, with a transitional section at The secondary tune enters in m. 25, provid- the midpoint and an extended coda. The repeti- ing contrast to the first theme. The three re- tion inherent in the formal structure becomes peated eighth notes that announce the theme, the medium through which the power of remi- the more frequent use of ornaments, and the niscence and mourning finds its agency. An chromatic lines in mm. 27 and 31 all comple- eight-measure introduction, with a rapid chro- ment the simple triadic movement of the pri- matic flourish, allowed the composer to estab- mary melody (ex. 3). In total, there are six rec- lish the key while adding dramatic excitement ollections of the primary theme and three of to the piece. Gottschalk would often take im- the secondary theme. These varied repetitions provisational liberties in his performances, of the two melodies provide increasingly florid which added an element of suspense for the ornamentation and expand the emotional range audience, who was usually familiar with the of the piece. For example, in m. 49, the primary published version of the piece.30 melody is heard in the right hand in arpeggiated The primary eight-measure melody is simple, chords marked “celeste.” Measures 57–64 con- yet has a large range developed through an ex- tain agitated transitional material that modu- panding wavelike shape (ex. 1). Three ascend- lates briefly into G minor and leads finally to ing arpeggiated figures in mm. 9–13 are an- the sixteenth-note, right-hand motion, which swered by a descent in mm. 14–16 (ex. 2). The continues to the end. From m. 72 to the end, theme is first heard in the low-middle range of the right hand never reaches below B in the the keyboard, unusual for Gottschalk, who middle of the treble staff and keeps primarily tends to favor the high registers. Taking the above that staff (ex. 4). The sixteenth-note context of the piece into consideration, this rhythm in the right hand is also constant to the end of the piece; this popular “nickelodeon” style was especially effective later during the 29Gottschalk, Notes, p. 230. The works Gottschalk pub- silent movie era. The left hand, meanwhile, lished under his nom de plume were in general less tech- nically challenging than his “legitimate” works. His refer- accompanies with a wavelike pattern that is ence to the compositions as “contraband” along with their quite peaceful, especially following the turbu- pseudonymous publication indicates that they were in- lent transition. tended to make money (which they did) rather than to elevate the moral compass of the consumers. Once The Example 4 also provides an illustration of Dying Poet became famous, however, he was quick to the proto-ragtime harmonic motion Gottschalk admit to its composition. often employed in works like his Souvenir de 30Starr, Bamboula!, pp. 233–34: “Moreau Gottschalk was an inveterate and inspired improviser. As a Chicago re- Porto Rico. In the last three beats of m. 95 viewer observed: ‘The charm of Gottschalk’s playing is, leading to m. 96, the cadential progression of that he rarely interprets the same piece twice in precisely V–ivo6–viio–I folds in onto itself chromatically. the same manner. The main features, of course, are there; but the finer shades of sentiment and feeling depend upon This sound is both distinctive and fresh and the mood of the composer. We have often heard the same was used regularly in ragtime composition. piece rendered by Gottschalk a second time with far more The increasingly expressive repetitions of the delicate tints and exquisite coloring than upon the first occasion.’ . . . That he wrote down his compositions at all melody provide insight into the impetus be- speaks more to the profitability of sheet music sales in hind the composition of this piece. Gottschalk’s that era than to any preference he had for formal composi- philosophy of music quoted earlier emphasized tion over improvisation.” The review is from an unidenti- fied Chicago newspaper, 13(?) December 1864, Scrapbook the power of reminiscence. In discussing no. 4, Gottschalk Collection, NYPL. Gottschalk’s sentimental works, his biographer

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LAURA 6 MOORE 8 PRUETT Gottschalk’s Dying Poet 6 8

rapido 5 brillante Example 1: The Dying Poet, mm. 1–8.

molto legato 9 6 8 6 8 ben cantato 13 poco rit. e dim. Example 2: The Dying Poet, mm. 9–16.

grazioso 25 6 8 a tempo 6 8

29 Example 3: The Dying Poet, mm. 25–32.

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6 8

un poco rit. a tempo 95 98 Example 4: The Dying Poet, mm. 92–99.

S. Frederick Starr comments: “Repetition . . . the war. His words again echo the sentimental [may] be inherent to the theme of loss and writers: longing. . . . The process of recollection or remi- niscence, which is itself a process of repetition, Saw the interment of a sergeant of artillery who was provides the sole point of fixity in a world of killed by a soldier. . . . The music was singular. . . . It flux.”31 An epigraph from Dante’s Divina was melancholy and mournful and filled you with Commedia accompanied the published version profound emotion. I followed them for a quarter of of Gottschalk’s Ricordati: another sentimental an hour, not being able to tear myself away from the melancholy charm of this strange music (Quebec, 8 piece “Nessun maggior dolore, che ricordasi July 1862). del tempo felice Nella miseria.” (There is no The other day in the car, there being no seat, I greater pain than to recall, out of one’s sorrow, took refuge in the baggage car, and there I smoked a happier time.)32 Whether labeled remem- for two hours, seated on the case of my piano, along- brance, recollection, or reminiscence, this pro- side of which, O human frailty! were two other cess characterizes both the sentimental art- cases also inclosing instruments, now mute, since works of the mid-nineteenth century and, per- the principle that made them vibrate, under a skill- haps more keenly, the mourning of those lost ful touch, like a keyboard, has left them. They were during the Civil War. Gottschalk himself expe- the bodies of two young soldiers killed in one of the 33 rienced and recorded such an experience of mel- recent battles (New York, 14 February 1865). ancholic grief on at least two occasions during In terms of music, therefore, repetition can be viewed as a technology of remembrance; in

31Starr, Bamboula! p. 204. 32Gottschalk, Ricordati (New York: William Hall & Son, 1865), p. 3. 33Gottschalk, Notes, pp. 84, 261.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lento LAURA MOORE 125 PRUETT 6 Gottschalk’s 8 Dying Poet marcato il canto 6 8 127 Example 5: The Dying Poet, mm. 125–28.

Gottschalk’s composition, each variation of the lection of 1823 in Paris.34 A section of the text melody has its own meaning, a different light and my translation follow: to cast on the subject of the dying poet. The most significant repetition of the pri- Compagnons dispersés de mon triste voyage, mary theme in The Dying Poet occurs in the O mes amis! O vous qui me fûtes si chers! coda. At m. 125, it appears in the left hand, De mes chants imparfaits recueillez l’héritage, under celeste chords high above the staff in the Et sauvez de l’oubli quelques-uns de mes vers. right hand. This last repetition of the main (Scattered companions from my sorrowful melody, marked p, appears in the left hand voyage, very simply—triads and seventh chords, with- O my friends! O you who were so dear to me, out arpeggiation, under a static right-hand ac- Give shelter to the legacy of my flawed songs, companiment (ex. 5). The “Lento” marking calls And rescue from oblivion a few of my verses.)35 for a slowing of the tempo. After the exciting harmonic movements and various embellish- The poem has been set as a song text by at ments of the previous recollections, this occur- least two composers; sub- rence sounds almost removed and distant. The titled his 1836 song Élégie, and Swiss composer high register of the right-hand chords adds to Louis Niedermeyer likely set the text around the far-away impression, and in the antepenul- the same time.36 Gottschalk was almost cer- timate measure, Gottschalk includes the mark- tainly familiar with Millevoye’s work, as the ing “perdendosi,” or dying away. Perhaps this posthumous compilation also includes both “Le is his musical gesture of farewell to the poet of Mancenillier” and “La Chute des feuilles,” po- the title. Or perhaps it is a sign of regret at his ems on which he had based earlier composi- decision to return to concertizing in the United States, having to say goodbye to his years of rest and productivity. 34Oeuvres Posthumes de Millevoye, vol. IV (Paris: Ladvocat, Two nineteenth-century French poems, both 1823), pp. 122–24. The poem was quoted earlier in 1816 by entitled “Le Poète mourant,” may provide a Étienne de Jouy in L’Hermite de la Guiane, ou observa- tions sur les moeurs et les usages français au Commence- glimpse of programmatic illumination of the ment du dix-neuvième siècle, vol. 2 (Paris: Pillet, 1816), p. piece, as it is likely that Gottschalk knew at 276. least one of them before writing his piano solo. 35Oeuvres Posthumes de Millevoye, IV, 123. 36Meyerbeer, Le Poète mourant (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, The first was written by Charles-Hubert de 1836). Poète mourant; élégie de Millevoye; musique de L. Millevoye (1782–1816) and published in a col- Niedermeyer (Paris: Pacini, n.d.).

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH tions. The complex imagery of “Le Poète plore the image of the wandering poet, never CENTURY MUSIC mourant” contains potentially significant con- staying in one place. This evokes Gottschalk’s nections to Gottschalk’s music. Narrated from own lifestyle during his touring years: always the first-person perspective of the dying poet traveling, leaving only his music behind. In himself, Millevoye’s text is addressed to those addition, Lamartine’s poet, in reflecting on his “scattered companions” who will be left be- life, recognizes the ennui that comes with the hind—perhaps fellow poets who can indeed day-to-day human existence: “rescue from oblivion” his poems. The phrases not only evoke a bittersweet recollection of the Qu’est-ce donc que des jours pour valoir qu’on past but draw attention to the wistful melan- les pleure? choly that accompanies this farewell. While Un soleil, un soleil; une heure, et puis une Gottschalk himself left no indication of the heure; poetic meaning of The Dying Poet, the time of Celle qui vient ressemble à celle qui s’enfuit; Ce qu’une nous apporte, une autre nous l’enlève: its composition corresponds with entries in his Travail, repos, douleur, et quelquefois un rêve, Notes that express dissatisfaction with the path Voilà le jour, puis vient la nuit. . . . his life had taken. The overall spirit of the Le poète est semblable aux oiseaux de passage journal is despondent, focusing on the unpleas- Qui ne bâtissent point leurs nids sur le rivage, ant and reminiscing upon happier times. The Qui ne se posent point sur les rameaux des bois; following excerpt from Gottschalk’s Notes con- Nonchalamment bercés sur le courant de l’onde, tains one of his unhappier reflections: Ils passent en chantant loin des bords; et le monde I live on the railroad—my home is somewhere be- Ne connaît rien d’eux, que leur voix. tween the baggage car and the last car of the train. . . . All notions of time and space are effaced from my (What are these days, to be worthy of mourning? mind. Just like the drunkard who, when asked the A sun, a sun, an hour, and then another hour; distance between the Chaussee-d’Antin and the Porte Each one that arrives echoing the one that just St.-Denis, replied, “ten small glasses.” If you ask me fled; what time it is, I will reply, “It is time to close my When one is given to us, another is taken away. trunk” or “It is time to play The Banjo” or “It is Labor, repose, sorrow, and occasionally a dream time to put on my black coat.” These three events This is the day, then comes the night. … are very nearly the most memorable of my daily The poet is like the birds of passage existence. I console myself by thinking that I am not That do not build their nests on the shore, the only one of my species (15 December 1862).37 Or settle on twigs of wood. Unheeding, cradled on the current of the waves, The last sentence of this entry in particular They pass, while singing, far from the shore, and parallels the Millevoye poem’s “scattered com- the world Knows nothing of them, other than their panions”; Gottschalk too feels alone and un- voices.)39 happy, but finds solace in the thought of others suffering a similar experience. The repetition of words to suggest the tedium The second poem, written by Alphonse de of life—“a sun, a sun, an hour, and another Lamartine (1790–1869), was included in his 1823 hour”—calls to mind Gottschalk’s remark about collection Nouvelle Méditations poétiques. A the three most memorable events of his daily poetic English translation appeared in existence. Furthermore, the striking image of Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Maga- zine in May 1836.38 The Lamartine verses ex-

and congressman from Illinois, and published in a posthu- 37Gottschalk, Notes, p. 99. mous collection, The Dying Poet, in 1918. Gottschalk bi- 38M.S., “The Dying Poet,” The Knickerbocker, or New- ographer Starr speculates on the possibility that Bromwell York Monthly Magazine 7 (May 1836), 466–68. An endnote could have given the translation to Gottschalk during his following the translation suggests that it may have origi- tour around 1862, before the piano piece was composed. nally appeared in La Tonnelle in April 1836. It was also Starr, Bamboula!, p. 350. translated by Henry P. H. Bromwell (1823–1903), a judge 39Translation mine.

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions homeless birds rocking on ocean waves can be “perdendosi.” The piano itself, in effect, dies at LAURA MOORE seen as a metaphor for Gottschalk’s self-por- the end of the composition along with the poet PRUETT trait in his journal: perpetually in motion, never metaphorically playing it. Gottschalk’s settling in one place, they, as he, are heard by The concepts of reminiscence and memory Dying Poet everyone yet truly known by nobody. pervade both French poems and cement the Aside from these specific instances of evoca- connections between their literary portrayals tive phrasings that are then in turn evoked in of the emotions associated with death and the Gottschalk’s reminiscing composition, the two musical allusions in Gottschalk’s composition. poems also share other telling traits. Both are Both poems have strong connections to the written from the first-person point of view of piano piece, in not only the shared title but the dying poet himself (aside from a short in- imagery that has meaning in relation to troduction and epilogue by an observing narra- Gottschalk himself. The voice of The Dying tor in the Millevoye poem), and both also in- Poet is an artist, weary of life and recalling clude references to a specific musical instru- better times. It could even be an autobiographi- ment—the lyre—simultaneously creating both cal reference to the composer himself. The Dy- a conspicuous connection to music and a nos- ing Poet was composed at a time when talgia for times long past (i.e., when poets played Gottschalk was afflicted with many worries— lyres). In Millevoye the poet speaks directly to money, travel, and reception among them. The his instrument: piece adheres to the then-current trend for sen- timental music, calling to mind reminiscences Brise-toi, lyre tant aimée! of better, forgotten times. For Gottschalk, this Tu ne survivras point à mon dernier sommeil; especially represented his rest in South and Et tes hymnes sans renommée Latin America, where he had been able to for- Sous la tombe avec moi dormiront sans réveil. get his worries and compose. The Dying Poet may reflect these sentiments and suggest his (Shatter thyself, my beloved lyre; You will not survive my last sleep. unhappiness with the monotonous existence And your unknown hymns he was enduring in the United States. Although Will sleep with me under the tombstone The Dying Poet was one of Gottschalk’s most without waking.) popular and lucrative pieces, it was composed during a time of relative discontent and melan- The image of the lyre is evoked frequently choly. It remains a poignant paradox—a simul- throughout Lamartine’s poem, along with the taneous reminder of his great sensitivity to the harp and the lute, again implying the ancient desires of the people for whom he performed past. The last few lines speak, as in Millevoye, and the profound loneliness he felt l of a silenced instrument: while performing for them.

Mon luth glacé se tait. . . . Amis, prenez le vôtre; Abstract. Et que mon âme encor passe d’un monde à The terms “sentimentalism” and “sensibility” play l’autre a central role in contemporary scholarly discourse Au bruit de vos sacrés concerts! on literature and intellectual theory in the long nine- teenth century. Often used interchangeably, these (My frozen lute is silent. . . . My friends, take words identify developments in popular culture and yours up; philosophy in which emotions and feelings, as op- So that my soul may yet pass from one world to posed to reason and logic, were seen as the routes to another moral and social improvement. In visual, literary, To the sound of your sacred melodies!) and musical artworks of the era, the emphasis on feeling was frequently connected to a male arche- The silenced instrument is also, somewhat para- type of the sentimental protagonist, a “dying poet,” doxically, present in the piano piece as well. As marked by several common elements: great creativ- the work comes to a close, the final variation, ity, high levels of sensitivity, physical and emo- which begins marked piano and “Lento,” be- tional fragility, significant moments of disappoint- comes even softer with the final marking of ment, and early (and often self-inflicted) death. The

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This content downloaded on Sat, 5 Jan 2013 01:15:11 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH subject of the dead or dying young man assumed during a time of relative discontent and melancholy. CENTURY critical significance during the 1860s, when so many In the mid-1860s, he was traveling across the Civil MUSIC soldiers were lost during the Civil War. War-torn United States on a gruelingly unrelenting For his immensely popular work The Dying Poet schedule. Gottschalk’s composition The Dying Poet (1864), composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk can be viewed as a poignant paradox—a simulta- likely drew inspiration from two French poems of neous example of his great sensitivity to the desires the same title that employed both the dying poet of his audience and a tantalizingly autobiographical trope and complex imagery of reminiscence. Al- glimpse of the profound loneliness he felt while per- though The Dying Poet was one of Gottschalk’s forming for them. Keywords: Gottschalk, sentimen- most popular and lucrative pieces, it was composed talism, piano music, Civil War, literature and poetry

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